Sutton Council has signed a five-year outsourcing deal worth more than £6m to modernise and improve its IT facilities.

The contract will begin in October and will provide greater resilience, a more flexible IT infrastructure and savings of more than £1m over the term of the agreement.

Supplier Steria will also provide thin client and virtual server technology to the council to improve cost effectiveness and simplify the support process.

‘The potential it brings to what we can offer customers and the flexibility it will give staff is very exciting,’ said lead councillor for IT Colin Hall.

‘Furthermore, it gives us improved business continuity to minimise the effects of any equipment failure.’

Once implemented, more than 2,500 users will benefit from improved remote working, enabling them to manage and respond to customer enquiries quickly.

Steria will host and maintain the new server and storage technology in its fully managed data centre, plus operating technical support to keep council’s systems running 24 hours a day.

Improved duplicate facilities at Steria’s remote backup site will reduce any downtime due to equipment failure.

Steria will begin managing a seven-month implementation programme this month before full operation commences in October.